Can you make money blogging? The simple answer is yes! The problem is that many bloggers will never make any money or very little. Why? Because like any business, blogging takes a whole lot more time and personal development than people expect, and most bloggers give up before understanding how to make money blogging. This post will save you a lot of time and get you on the right track.
Why You Don’t Make Money Blogging
I created three blogs that didn’t make any money before finally “getting it” and figuring out how you can make money blogging. Let’s talk about common mistakes and things bloggers do that prevent them from earning an income. I am going to help you avoid making the same mistakes.
Blogging Without a Purpose
Blogging without a purpose is the root cause of most blogging failures. There was a time when bloggers could just write about random musings and be successful. These days, the competition is fierce. If you want to be read, you need to make sure your stuff is worth reading. Blogging with a purpose is done in three steps: pick a problem to solve, make sure the product you sell solves that same problem, and blog using keywords that relate to the problem.
1. Pick a Problem to Solve
The first thing you need to do is make sure you are clear on the problem you want to solve for your audience. Finding your competitors through niche research is a useful way to go about it. Thinking about some of your own problems you solved and would like to write about is another method. Start with one specific problem. As your website grows, you can offer multiple products that solve multiple problems. However, at first, the more focused you are at first, the quicker you will see results. Read my post How to Get the Highest Conversion Rate on Your Site With a Micro Niche if you would like more guidance on defining your niche and the problem you want to solve. Don’t forget to sign up to my free 30-Minute Workshop, to learn everything you need to know about creating a niche site.
2, Make Sure the Product You Sell Solves the Problem
Once you are clear on the problem you would like to solve, you need to pick a monetization strategy that solves the problem in question. Maybe it’s product that you love and has solved the problem for you. Maybe it’s a digital course that taught you how to overcome it. Whatever it is, blogging with a purpose means that you are always keeping your monetization strategy in mind. Your content isn’t random. Read How to Find Affiliate Programs In Your Niche in 3 Simple Steps if you are still not sure of what you want to sell.
3. Blog Using Keywords That Relate to the Problem
The next step is to thinkg about the questions that people who want to solve your problem are asking.
Get Keyword Ideas Using Chrome Extensions
Google those questions and write down the keywords that relate to your ideas. Use the Chrome extension Keywords Everywhere or Ubersuggest for more keyword ideas. These chrome extensions will give you some very useful data when you google yoru questions. For example, the search traffic they receive, as well as some related keywords and long tail keywords. You will see all this info on the right of yoru screen.
Get Keyword Ideas Through Your Competitors
Another helpful way to find more topic ideas for your blog is to keep track of your competitors. Now, if you have done your niche research right, you should have a list of competitors handy. Make sure your competitors offer a simialar product as the product you are offering. There is no point in picking competitors just because the have blog posts about some topics that your blog covers if the rest of their website is completely different and their monetization strategy doesn’t align with yours.
When you have your competitors figured out, use Ubersuggest to see which keywords they rank for. Produce better content using the same keywords. It doesn’t guarantee that you will outrank them, particularly when your site is newer, but it will help build domain authority. Moreover, you will rank for keywords you never expected through this content creation and this will help you find even more ideas. Read How to Come Up With Blogging Ideas for 2022 to learn even more about planning your blog post and using different tools to come up with blogging ideas.
Wasting Time on Non Income Producing Activities
That’s a big one! As a new blogger, chances are the number of hours you can devote to your online business is very limited. Picking the right activities to occupy your time is crucial! This is how I prioritize my tasks:
- Writing blog content. Writing blog content with a purpose is what brings traffic to your site. The more traffic, the more sales.
- Creating freebies. As your blog grows, you will cover more topics and you can start creating other lead magnets to solve other problems. This will help you see what your audience wants and needs.
- Creating digital products. Some niche blogs don’t have a mailing list and don’t sell any digital products. They rely solely on ads to monetize. That’s not the approach I use. My health and wellness blog doesn’t have a crazy amount of traffic yet (around 25k pageviews a month), yet it earns more than it would if I installed ads on it. A combination of digital products and affiliate products that aim to solve the same problem is the most effective approach in my opinion.
- Dealing with dministrative tasks. You will find that little things that you need to do for your blogs add up and you eventually need to deal with them. It could be modifying your onboarding email sequence or creating a new landing page for a freebie. Whatever it is, you need to make time for it at some point.
- Posting on social media. Social media is a fun way to connect with your audience, but notice how it’s the last item on my priority list? That’s because unless you have a huge following, I would not say it’s an income producing activity. And you know what? Bloggers should never sacrifice blog content over social media presence.
If you have time for only one thing each day, let it be writing blog content. You can always put your blog aside for a month or so once you have some traffic going to create a digital product, but otherwise, writing blog content is your number one priority.
Giving Up
Ok, I know writing blog content over and over is tedious and get get boring! Sometimes, you will feel like you are stuck in a rut and all you do is write about the same topics over and over! That is definitely a pain point in the blogging world and that must be why so many Facebook ads I see tell me that I can monetize my digital products without ever blogging again! lol I am sure this can be done, but not organically. I imaging these making-money-without-blogging strategies use ad funnels.
I am planning to use ads to scale my health and wellness business in the near future and I will share what I learn on this blog. However, at this point I think that beginners need to learn to grow by driving organic traffic to their website.
No business is all fun and games. No matter what you choose to do to earn an income, some aspects of your work will be tough at times. You might get discouraged or feel unmotivated. And it’s OK! Keep pushing. I can guarantee you that what I teach works. It takes time but it works. I know because I have repeated it multiple times in different niches with the same results.
Whatever you do, don’t give up. Success may come in a different way than you expected, but if you take each step as a learning opportunity, it will happen.
In Summary
To summarize everything, making money blogging is not complicated. It requires some basic SEO knowledge and keyword research skills. Furthermore, you need to be clear on your monetization strategy and the problem it solves in your niche. Apart form that, it’s mostly about repeating the same tasks until you see the results you want.
